Authors decry Google project

GOOGLE Inc, which scanned and upload books of more than 700 Chinese writers without permission, should provide a compensation plan for writers by the end of this year, a Chinese authors' group urged today.

The demand marked the second time in a few days that US-based companies came under fire in China for intellectual property violations after Microsoft was found to have violated the intellectual property rights of a Chinese company in its fonts.

"Chinese authors should protect their own IPs and Google should give us a satisfactory result with a deadline of December 31," the China Written Works Copyright Society said on its Website today.

The group also demanded that Google provide a full list of books by Chinese authors it has scanned and declared that the company could not scan any more Chinese works without permission.

Under Google's Book Search program, the company has scanned hundreds of thousands of books and placed parts of the contents online.

Google and US copyright organizations submitted a revised settlement agreement on Saturday to a US court. But it does not apply in China, which means that Google has to negotiate with Chinese authors separately.

Google China was not available to comment on the issue.

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